Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders., Chapter 26:

The most remarkable military event of the midsummer of 1863 was the successful defence of Charleston against a most imposing demonstration of the enemy's power by land and by sea. We have seen how unsuccessful was the naval attack upon this city in April, 1863. It was not long, however, before another attempt was planned upon Fort Sumter and Charleston, the steps of which were the military occupation of Morris Island and the establishment of batteries on that island to assist in the reduction of Fort Sumter. The establishment of these batteries and the reduction of the Confederate works-Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg--was a matter of [430] great engineering skill, and Gen. Q. A. Gillmore was selected to command the land forces of the enemy engaged in these operations. Morris Island was on the south side of the entrance to the harbour, about three and a half miles in length, low, narrow, and sandy, and separated from the mainland adjacent to it by soft, deep, and impracticable marshes. Its capture, although principally designed to open a way to the enemy's iron-clads, would also serve the purpose of making the blockade of Charleston harbour more thorough and complete, by allowing a portion or all of the blockading fleet to lie inside the bar. But the most important object, as we have indicated, was to secure a position whence it was hoped Fort Sumter might be demolished, and the co-operation of a heavy artillery fire extended to the fleet, when it was ready to move in, run by the batteries on James and Sullivan's Islands, and reach the city.

Gen. Gillmore assumed command on the 12th June, and at once proposed to commence a base of operations on Folly Island. This island, the south end of which controlled the waters of Stone Harbour and Inlet and the water approaches from James Island, had been occupied in force by the enemy since the 7th April. But Gen. Beauregard appears to have had no idea of what was going on there; he never made a reconnoissance of the enemy's outposts on the island; and he was bitterly accused in the Richmond Sentinel, the organ of President Davis' administration, for a want of vigilance, which had permitted the enemy, unknown to him, to construct a base of operations actually within speaking distance of his pickets. It is true that the enemy threw up earthworks and mounted heavy guns on Folly Island under a screen of thick undergrowth; but it is certainly to the last degree surprising that he should have succeeded in secretly placing in battery forty-seven pieces of artillery so near to the Confederate lines that a loud word might have revealed the work, and exposed moreover to a flank and reverse view from their tall observatories on James Island. Indeed there was a circumstance yet more curious. A blockade runner had been chased ashore just south of the entrance to Lighthouse Inlet, and it actually occurred that the vessel was wrecked by Confederate soldiers within pistol range of the enemy's battery on Folly Island, without their being in the least aware of such a grim neighbour.

This battery was ready to open fire on the 6th July. A plan of attack upon Morris Island was now deliberately formed, one part of which was a strong demonstration of Gen. Terry's division, some four thousand infantry, on James Island so as to draw off a portion of the Confederate force on Morris Island. While this demonstration was taking place, two thousand men of Gen. Strong's brigade were to embark in small boats in Folly River, effect a landing on Morris Island, and, at a given signal, attempt to carry Fort Wagner by assault. The batteries on the north end of Folly [431] Island were also ordered to be unmasked, by opening out the embrasures and cutting away the brushwood in front of them.

At daybreak of the 10th July, forty launches containing Strong's assaulting column crept up Folly River with muffled oar-locks; the ironclad fleet crossed the bar, and took up its position in the main ship-channel off Morris Island; two hundred axemen suddenly sprung from behind the batteries on Folly Island, and felled the trees which hid them from view; embrasure after embrasure was laid bare; and at five o'clock the first gun was heard from the suddenly revealed battery, and the dense white smoke which rose above the tall pines marked the new line of conflict. Meanwhile the assaulting column had landed ; the Confederate lines were drawn within eight hundred yards of Fort Wagner; and offensive operations were suspended for the day.

An assault on Fort Wagner was ordered at five o'clock the next morning. The Seventh Connecticut Regiment was to take the lead, followed by the Seventy-Sixth Pennsylvania and Ninth Maine. Gen. Strong, who led the assaulting column, gave a Cromwellian order: “Aim low, and put your trust in God!” The Connecticut soldiers took the double-quick, and with a cheer rushed for the works. Before they reached the outer works, they got a terrible fire from the Confederate rifles, and the fort opened with three 8-inch howitzers, heavily charged with grape and canister. The men went over the outer works with an extraordinary courage, that must be recorded to their honour, and were advancing to the crest of the parapet, when it was discovered that the regiments which were to support them had staggered back and lost their distance. The Connecticut regiment was left to effect its retreat through a sheet of fire. Nearly one half of them were killed or wounded. But the loss of the Confederates was quite as large. Gen. Beauregard estimated his losses in opposing the landing of the enemy at three hundred killed and wounded, including sixteen officers. The attack was undoubtedly a surprise to him, as he had persisted in the belief that the demonstration against Charleston would be made by the old route-James Island-and accordingly had almost stripped Morris Island of his artillerymen and infantry, to meet the advance of Terry.

But although the assault on Fort Wagner was repulsed, the remissness of Gen. Beauregard with respect to the battery on Folly Island was to cost dear enough. It compelled the evacuation of all the fortified positions of the Confederates on the south end of Morris Island; in fact, surrendered all the island except about one mile on the north end, which included Fort Wagner and Fort Gregg on Cumming's Point; and virtually made the reduction of these works but a question of time. It was very clear that the enemy, having once obtained a foothold on Morris Island, would eventually compel an evacuation by the operations of siege, and that it was impossible [432] to defend forever a small island cut off from communication by an enormous fleet. It only remained for Gen. Beauregard to repair as far as possible the errour he had already committed, and to find some compensation for what had already occurred. And well did he do this secondary duty. Admitting the impracticability of defending Morris Island after the position of the enemy on it was fully established and covered by the ironclads, Gen. Beauregard yet appreciated the opportunity of holding the island long enough to replace Sumter by interiour positions, and saw clearly that every day of defence by Wagner was vital to that of Charleston. For two months this policy was successful.

Gen. Gillmore was not content with his first essay to take Fort Wagner by storm. He held a conference with Admiral Dahlgren, commanding the fleet, and determined to attempt, with the combined fire of the land batteries and the gunboats, to dismount the principal guns of the work, and either drive the Confederates from it, or open the way to a successful assault. Batteries were accordingly established, and were ready to open fire on the 18th July, when the enemy's fleet, consisting of four Monitors, the Ironsides, a frigate, and four gunboats, some of which threw shell from mortars, closed in opposite Fort Wagner.

About noon the enemy's vessels commenced hurling their heaviest shot and shell around, upon, and within Fort Wagner, and, with intervals of but a very few minutes, continued this terrible fire, until one hour after the sun had gone down. Vast clouds of sand, mud, and timber were sent high up into the air. Forty-eight hours the Monitors and the Ironsides had kept up a continuous fire, and Fort Wagner had not surrendered. For eight hours, fifty-four guns from the land batteries had hurled their shot and shell within her walls, and still she flaunted the battle-flag of the Confederacy in the face of the enemy. Once during the day the flag was shot down. Immediately it was run up about ten feet above the parapet, a little cluster of men rallied around it, waved their hats, and then disappeared, and were not again seen during the day. There was no other sign of human life about the fort. It appeared as if the garrison was dead or conquered. “But,” said a Federal officer, who watched the scene, “there were a few later developments that proved their opinion was the correct one who said this profound silence on the rebel side was significant, not of defeat and disaster, but of ultimate success in repulsing our assault; that they were keeping themselves under cover until they could look into the eyes of our men, and send bullets through their heads, and would then swarm by thousands with every conceivable deadly missile in their hands, and drive us in confusion and with terrible slaughter back to our entrenchments.”

Gillmore had selected the time of twilight for the storming party to move to the attack, in order that it might not be distinctly seen from the [433] James Island and Sullivan's Island batteries, and from Fort Sumter. But this time there was to be no surprise. As the bombardment relaxed, it was known at Fort Wagner that such a demonstration on the part of the enemy was not without its object; and every man was ordered by Gen. Taliaferro, who commanded the fort, to the parapet to prepare for the expected assault of the enemy.

At dusk the assaulting column was formed on the beach. A regiment of negro soldiers, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, was, for peculiar reasons, put in the extreme advance. There were eleven regiments in solid column As the head of it debouched from the first parallel, a tremendous fire from the barbette guns on Fort Sumter, from the batteries on Cumming's Point, and from all the guns on Fort Wagner, opened upon it. The guns from Wagner swept the beach, and those from Sumter and Cumming's Point enfiladed it on the left. Still the column staggered on within eighty yards of the fort. And now a compact and most destructive musketry fire was poured upon it from the parapet, along which gleamed a fringe of fire. In five minutes the first line of the enemy had been shot, bayoneted, or were in full retreat. The First Brigade, under the lead of Gen. Strong, failed to take the fort. The Second recoiled; and the few troops that had clambered to the parapet, now found the most desperate task to effect a retreat. It was a night black with tempest. Even if they surrendered, the shell of Sumter were thickly falling around them in the darkness, and, as prisoners, they could not be safe until victory, decisive and unquestioned, rested with one or the other belligerent. It was a retreat of untold horrours. Men rolled in the ditch, or dragged their bloody bodies through the sand-hills, on their hands and knees. About midnight there was silence at last; the battle was over; the ocean beach was crowded with the dead, the dying, and the wounded. The loss of the enemy was severe --fifteen hundred and fifty killed and wounded, according to his own statement, which must have been below the truth, as the Confederates buried six hundred of his dead left on the field. Their own loss was not more than one hundred in killed and wounded.

After this second successful defence of Fort Wagner the remainder of the month of July, and the early part of August, were employed by the enemy in erecting siege-works, and mounting heavy siege-guns, preparatory to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, as it was found that Fort Wagner did not interfere with the engineer corps at work. Meanwhile Gen. Beauregard and the Mayor of Charleston issued another urgent appeal to the landed proprietors and others to send in their negroes to work on the fortifications; and the Governor of the State made an even stronger appeal. There was, however, much indifference shown in promptly responding; and though an act of the Legislature had been passed involving a penalty on refusal, many of the planters preferred paying it to allowing their negroes to be so employed. [434]

But to the desultory operations on Fort Wagner a remarkable episode was to take place. Gen. Gillmore flattered himself that he had discovered the precise point where to establish a battery from which he would be able to batter down the forts in the harbour and even the city of Charleston. It was said that he had at his disposal pieces whose range and effects surpassed all conception; and Northern newspapers were filled with the story of a new discovery called “the Greek Fire,” which was to be poured upon Charleston, and consume “the cradle of secession.” The prospect of what such devilish agents of destruction might accomplish was pleasing to many of the Northern people; it was announced that Gillmore was experimenting in liquid fire, that he had made a new style of bombs, and many other pyrotechnic inventions, and that he might soon be expected to “roll his fire-shells through the streets of Charleston.”

The point whence such work was to be accomplished, and where Gillmore thought to discover the vitals of Charleston, was nearly midway between Morris and James Islands, seven thousand yards distant from the lower end of Charleston city. Here, on the marsh-mud — where a crab might crawl, but where a man would sink in a few minutes to the depth of twenty-five feet--there was prepared a plan of a battery for one 8-inch Parrott rifle (300-pounder). It was a singular achievement of labour and skill. The work had to be done under cover of darkness, and it was necessary to hide the pieces of wood during the day with grass and sea-weed. In the night-time piles were driven in the mud-shoa. which separated the two islands; fifteen thousand bags of sand, about one hundred and ten pounds each, were brought in the vessels to make a terre-plein and a parapet. The work was executed in fourteen nights, from the 2d till the 18th of August. After breaking, by its great weight, several trucks, the monster gun was finally hauled up, and placed in position, and Charleston, four miles and a half away, little dreamed that the “Swamp Angel” ¹— [435] as this new agent of destruction was called — was looking into her streets.

On the 21st August, Gen. Gillmore addressed to Gen. Beauregard a demand for the evacuation of Morris Island and Fort Sumter, and threatening, if not complied with, “in less than four hours, a fire would be opened on the city of Charleston, from batteries already established within easy and effective reach of the heart of the city.”

The reply of Gen. Beauregard was memorable. He wrote, in a letter ad dressed to Gillmore: “It would appear, sir, that despairing of reducing these works, you now resort to the novel means of turning your guns against the old men, the women and children, and the hospitals of a sleeping city; an act of inexcusable barbarity, from your own confessed point of view, inasmuch as you allege that the complete demolition of Fort Sumter within a few hours by your guns seems to you a matter of certainty; and your omission to attach your signature to such a grave paper, must show the recklessness of the course upon which you have adventured, while the fact that you knowingly fixed a limit for receiving an answer to your demand, which made it almost beyond the possibility of receiving any reply within that time, and that you actually did open fire and threw a number of the most destructive missiles ever used in war into the midst of a city taken unawares, and filled with sleeping women and children, will give you a bad eminence in history-even in the history of this war.”

If the enemy's execution had equalled his desire, there is no doubt that the city of Charleston would have been reduced to ruins and ashes; women and children murdered indiscriminately; and an outrage committed that would have shocked the sensibilities of the world. But happily Gen. Gillmore was not able to do what he threatened, and what that cowardly hate in the North, whose invocation against the South was, “Kill all the inhabitants,” waited for him to accomplish. The attempted bombardment of Charleston was a failure. Some few missiles from the Federal batteries on Morris Island reached the city. Twelve 8-inch shells fell in the streets; several flew in the direction of St. Michael's steeple; but fortunately no one was injured. The “Swamp Angel” fired only a few shots. At the thirty-sixth discharge the piece burst, blowing out the entire breech in rear of the vent. No guns were placed in the Marsh Battery after this; the “Greek fire” proved a humbug; and firing upon the city was not resumed until after all of Morris Island came into the enemy's possession.

The formidable strength of Fort Wagner, as developed in the unsuccessful assault of the 18th July, induced Gen. Gillmore to modify his plan of operations, and while pressing the siege of Fort Wagner by regular approaches, to turn his fire over the heads of both this work and Fort Gregg upon the walls of Sumter. It was thus determined to attempt the demolition of Fort Sumter from ground already in the enemy's possession, so that [436] the iron-clad fleet could, with as little delay as possible, enter upon the ex edition of their part of the joint programme. The early elimination of this famous fort from the conflict, considered simply as auxiliary to the reduction of Fort Wagner, was greatly to be desired, and elaborate arrangements were at once commenced to place the breaching guns in position.

On the 18th August, Gillmore opened heavily against the east face cf Fort Sumter from his land batteries enfilading it. The cannonade was continued throughout the day, nine hundred and forty-three shots being tired. The effect was to batter the eastern face heavily, doing considerable damage, and to disable one ten-inch gun and a rifled forty-two pounder. On the 22d the enemy threw six hundred and four shots at the fort, disabling some of the barbette guns, demolishing the arches of the northwest face, and scaling the eastern face severely. The next day the fire from the enemy's land batteries was kept up on Sumter, disabling the only ten-inch columbiad that remained, and the three rifled forty-two pounders in the northern salient of the second tier. The eastern face was badly scaled, and the parapet seriously injured.

On the 24th August Gen. Gillmore reported to Washington “the practical demolition of Fort Sumter as the result of our seven days bombardment of that work.” The assertion was insolent and absurd. Fort Sumter had, indeed, been severely injured; but it was in one respect stronger than ever; for the battering down of the upper walls had rendered the casemated base impregnable, and the immense volume of stone and debris which protected it, was not at all affected by the enemy's artillery. Although apparently a heap of ruins, it still afforded shelter to the Confederate heroes, who raised the standard of the South each time it was beaten down; and it was still protected by the batteries of Fort Wagner, which the Federals had vainly endeavoured to carry by assault. Gen. Gillmore must, at all hazard, overcome this obstacle. He opened the trenches by means of the rolling sap, making work enough for a company of miners. Five parallels were established in succession, and two batteries were constructed, with bandages, under fire of James and Sullivan's Islands. From this moment Fort Wagner received more fire than she could return; solid shot and shells fell right and left; no living soul could remain upon the parapets; everything was shattered in pieces; the arches of the casemates commenced to crumble in, and to crush the defenders who had sought refuge there.

For two days and nights the fort had been subjected to the most terrific fire that any earthwork had undergone in all the annals of warfare. All the light mortars of the enemy were moved to the front, and placed in battery; the rifled guns were trained upon the fort; and powerful calcium lights aided the night work of the cannoniers and sharpshooters and blinded the Confederates. It was a scene of surpassing grandeur. The [437] calcium lights turned night into day, and brought the minutest details of the fort into sharp relief. For forty-two consecutive hours, seventeen siege and coehorn mortars unceasingly dropped their shells into the work while thirteen heavy Parrott rifles-100, 200, and 300-pounders-pounded away at short though regular intervals. Peal on peal of artillery rolled over the waters; a semi-circle of the horizon was lit up; an autumnal moon hung in the misty sky; and ear and eye were alike appealed to with emotions of sublimity and grandeur. The shock of the rapid discharges trembled through the city, calling hundreds of citizens to the battery, wharves, steeples, and various look-outs, where, with an interest never felt before, they gazed on a contest that might decide the fate of Charles ton itself.

On the night of the 6th September, Gen. Gillmore ordered an assault on Fort. Wagner at the hour of low tide on the following morning. The assault was to be made in three columns. About midnight a deserter reported to him that the Confederates were evacuating the island. The work of evacuation had commenced at nine o'clock that night, and was already concluded. All the garrison had got off upon the Chicora, an iron-clad gunboat of the Confederates, and fourteen barges. Fort Gregg had been equally abandoned. Morris Island was thus the prize of the enemy, who now possessed themselves of Cumming's Point, from which they could plainly see Charleston at a distance of four miles.

The Northern public at once jumped to the conclusion that Gillmore had the key of Charleston, and had at last opened the gate to the Monitors and iron-clads, which, at leisure, might ascend the harbour. Gillmore himself insisted that he had done his part of the work; that “Fort Sumter was a shapeless and harmless mass of ruins;” and he indicated that it only remained for Admiral Dahlgren, with his fleet, to enter upon the scene, and accomplish the reduction of Charleston. But from this view the Federal admiral dissented; he indicated that Gen. Beauregard had accomplished a new object by his long retention of Morris Island; that, in fact, he had replaced Sumter by an interior position, had obtained time to convert Fort Johnson from a forlorn old fort into a powerful earthwork, and had given another illustration of that new system of defence practised at Comorn and Sebastapol, where, instead of being any one key to a plan of fortification, there was the necessity of a siege for every battery, in which the besiegers were always exposed to the fire of others. He was unwilling, too, to risk the destructive defenses and infernal machines with which the passes were blockaded. The Confederates had given out that by no possibility could one of the gunboats escape these, and Dahlgren's squadron of iron-clads and Monitors did not dare venture far up the harbour past Fort Ripley and within range of the immediate defences of the city.

Gillmore claimed that he had reduced Fort Sumter; but the Confederate [438] flag still floated over it. It had been held through the siege and cannonade by the First South Carolina Artillery, under Col. Alfred Rhett, until its armament had been disabled; and the services of the artillerymen being elsewhere required, Gen. Beauregard determined that it should be held by infantry. On the night of the 4th September, the Charleston Battalion, under Maj. Blake, relieved the garrison; Maj. Stephen Elliot relieving Col. Rhett in command of the post. On the 7th of September, Admiral Dahlgren, determined to test Gillmore's assertion that Sumter was a “harmless mass of ruins,” summoned the fort to surrender. Gen. Beauregard telegraphed to Maj. Elliot to reply to Dahlgren that he could have Fort Sumter when he took it and held it, and that in the mean time such demands were puerile and unbecoming.

In the evening of the 7th September, the iron-clads and Monitors approached Fort Sumter closer than usual, and opened a hot fire against it. In the night of the 9th September thirty of the launches of the enemy attacked Fort Sumter. Preparations had been made for the event. At a concerted signal, all the batteries bearing on Sumter assisted by one gunboat and a ram, were thrown open. The enemy was repulsed, leaving in our hands one hundred and thirteen prisoners, including thirteen officers. There were also taken four boats and three colours, and the original flag of Fort Sumter, which Maj. Anderson was compelled to lower in 1861, and which Dahlgren had hoped to replace.

After this repulse of the Federals in their last attack upon Fort Sumter, but little more was done during the year by the enemy, except bombarding the forts and shelling Charleston at intervals during day and night, until this became so customary that it no longer excited dismay or was an occasion of alarm to even women and children. The city was intact and safe; Gillmore had expended many thousand lives and thrown shell enough to build several iron-clads to obtain a position that proved worthless; Admiral Dahlgren feared the destruction of a fleet which had cost so much sacrifice, and refused to ascend the harbour; and the demonstration upon Charleston degenerated into the desultory record of a fruitless bombardment. The Northern public appeared to sicken of the experiment of Parrott guns and monster artillery, and read with disgust the daily bulletins of how many hundred useless shots had been fired, and of how much ammunition had been grandly expended in a great noise to little purpose. “How many times,” asked an indignant Philadelphia paper, “has Fort Sumter been taken? How many times has Charleston been burned? How often have the people been on the eve of starvation and surrender? How many times has the famous Greek Fire poured the rain of Sodom and the flames of hell upon the secession city? We cannot keep the count --but those can who rang the bells and put out the flags, and invoked the imprecations, and rejoiced at the story of conflagration and ruin.”

The following effusion of a Northern writer gives an explanation of this name, in which blasphemy and devilish hate are united. The poetry reads like the exultation of a fiend.

The “Swamp Angel” hears the traitor boasting of security, and sends forth its dreadful warning that “nowhere in these United States are traitors safe from the avenging wrath of the Republic.”

Flaunting, and boasting, and brisk, and gay,
The streets of the city shine to-day.
Forts without, our army within,
To think of surrender were deadly sin;
For the foe far over the wave abide,
And no guns can reach o'er the flowing tide.
They can't? Through the air, with a rush and a yell,
Come the screech and the roar of the howling shell;
And the populous city is still alive
With the bees that are leaving the ancient hive;
And the market-places are waste and bare,
And the smoke hangs thick in the poisoned air;
And the ruins alone shall remain to tell
Where the hymn of destruction was sung by the shell!

1866.

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Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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